1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus for facilitating the movement of pies from a bakery to a restaurant or other place of consumption, and in particular to a portable pie case which is loaded with pies at the bakery, is hand carried between the bakery, a delivery truck, and a customer's place of business, and which is adapted to adequately support pies which are in relatively thin metal foil pie pans, and to protect pies against damage by restraining them against sliding movement while in the case.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The most common way of commercially transporting pies from their place of manufacture to a customer's place of business involves the use of cabinet type pie racks built into a delivery truck. These racks comprise compartments which are slightly wider than the diameter of the pies and in which a plurality of pies are supported vertically apart. The pies are individually placed into and removed from the compartments. Each pie is supported on and by small support members which underlie only relatively small, diametrically opposed portions of the pie pan lip.
Problems were immediately experienced with this type of pie rack when disposable metal foil type pie pans replaced returnable pie pans. This was because the rims of the foil type pie pans lacked sufficient stiffness to carry the weight of the pies without bending. Some users attempted to solve the problem by using two pans with each pie instead of one. However, this practice only added to the cost of the pies; it was generally unsuccessful in solving the problem. Also, the pies still had to be individually placed into and removed from the racks.
Another known method of transporting pies involves the use of wooden boxes in which the pies are supported on vertically spaced apart shelves. In practice, a plurality of pies are loaded into each wooden box in the bakery. Then, a cardboard box is inverted over each wooden box to provide an enclosure. The pie containing boxes are then hand trucked or otherwise loaded into delivery trucks and later are moved out from the delivery trucks into the customer's place of business. One disadvantage of this manner of transporting pies is that the pies are free to slide on the shelves and can be damaged by impacting against a wall of the box. Also, the boxes are very difficult to clean and as a result are quite often not cleaned. Further, in practice, it has been found that the customers quite often assume that these boxes represent little value to the bakery, particularly after they have become quite dirty from much use. As a result, a large number of the boxes are not returned, but rather are used by the customer for some other purpose or are merely discarded. The losses suffered have been substantial and, of course, they add to the cost of conducting business.
U.S. Pat. No. 785,591, granted Mar. 21, 1905, to Germain Conez discloses a pie displaying cabinet for use in restaurants. Such cabinet includes side located support members of the same general type as described above in connection with the cabinets which are built into the delivery trucks. In other words, the support members underlie and provide support for only a pair of relatively small diametrically opposed lip portions of each pie pan. The patentee states that this manner of supporting the pies, together with some other features of his cabinet, makes the cabinet easy to clean. However, it can easily be seen by an inspection of this patent that the opposed edge support would require the use of a pie pan of substantial stiffness in order to prevent the pie pan from collapsing under the weight of the pie.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,636,797, granted Apr. 28, 1953, to Henry A. Alheit discloses another type of display case for pies. It includes wire members adapted for engaging diametrically opposed portions of each pie plate. However, in this case, the wire members are curved so that they will underlie and support a larger portion of the lip of the pie pan. The curved nature of the wire support members also results in such members functioning to restrain the pies against unwanted sliding movement. This patent should be carefully considered when putting the present invention into proper perspective relative to the prior art, together with the following less pertinent patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 156,059, granted Oct. 20, 1874, to Scow D. Jordan and Frank H. Jordan;
U.S. Pat. No. 369,044, granted Aug. 30, 1887, to James K. Cleary;
U.S. Pat. No. 3,199,683, granted Aug. 10, 1965, to Edward Graswich; and
U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,569, granted July 8, 1975, to Frank R. Hoch.